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Monday, March 28, 2011

Top Suspense Anthology

I’ve just read the first anthology published by the Top Suspense Group, a gathering of fine writers who have joined forces to provide consistently excellent mystery, suspense, horror, and Western e-books. There are twelve authors currently involved, and in this anthology they’ve brought together a variety of stories, some reprints and some new, that share the quality of being top-notch entertainment. Here’s the line-up:

What sets TOP SUSPENSE apart from many anthologies I’ve read is that there’s not a weak story in the bunch. They’re all good. I had read some of them before but read those again and thoroughly enjoyed them. Since I’m friends with many of these writers and have known some of them for decades, I hesitate to start listing favorites. That said . . . I really enjoyed Joel Goldman’s Depression-era crime story “Fire in the Sky”, Ed Gorman’s haunting “The Baby Store”, Vicki Hendrick’s Florida-set noir “The Big O”, and “The Chase”, a slightly crazed and highly entertaining round-robin story written by the authors in 250-word chunks. I had to laugh several times because I could almost see the authors at their computers cackling fiendishly as they set something up for the next author in line to tackle. Having been involved in several “collaborative novels”, I can tell you that sometimes that set-up works, and sometimes it doesn’t. In “The Chase”, it works really well.

TOP SUSPENSE is one of the best anthologies I’ve read in quite a while and well worth your attention. Highly recommended.